"By the People": HBO's look at the Obama campaign

Tomorrow will be a year to the day that Barack Obama was elected president of these United States.

With all that has happened since then, it's getting harder to remember the headiness of that time -- whether Democratic or Republican or Independent, you can't dispute the historic nature of the 2008 election.

HBO's "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" (9 tonight) reminds us not just of election day, but President Obama's journey to his victory. And even if the memories and the emotions linger, you'll still learn something.

That's because the film focuses mostly on the people, mostly young, who worked on the Obama campaign. Sure David Axelrod is there, as is North Carolina State University grad Robert Gibbs.

But you mostly see staffers like Ronnie Cho and Michael Blake, young and passionate, who were the door knockers, organizers, all-nighters -- the folks who experienced the ups and downs and felt them as much as the candidate.

The film starts with the Iowa caucus and gives an inside look at exactly how that process works. (There's a great scene of a 9-year-old working the phones and his frustration at the listener's ignorance of Obama.) While there are glimpses of other candidates; we see Hilary Clinton's famous breakdown and Sarah Palin's nomination, the focus is squarely on the Obama campaign.

One of the most poignant scenes near the end involves Obama's stop in Charlotte, the day before the election and the day his grandmother died. Obama begins his speech mentioning her, then segues into his typical stump rhetoric. But as he speaks, a single tear comes down his face. It pretty much says all about what he was feeling and thinking.

If a campaign is reflective of the candidate, then the dignified, measured Obama we see is the real deal because that's what you get behind the scenes. Unlike "The War Room," the film that featured the architects of Bill Clinton's campaign, there's no cussing here (maybe these filmmakers didn't get the same access?), no real fighting. The Obama folk seemed to have had a vision and stuck to it, even through the bumps like Rev. Wright. Guess that's why he won.

I'd like to have seen more about Jon Favreau, the speechwriter, just because speeches were such a hallmark of the campaign. It's pretty tough to document the writing process in an interesting way but I would love to know how he developed some of the themes of the campaign speeches.

"By The People" is a worthy document of a transformative time in our nation's history. We don't know how the America/Obama journey ends, but in its beginnings there was much promise and we should remember that too.